Some guys on the Metal Sludge board wanted to know about Dusk...so I asked Jeff to put his memories down in writing....if you've heard Dusk...prepare to be blown away.

Talk about the recording of Dusk

Jeff Martin writes:

Dusk, or the tunes put on the album, were intended as demos for the next Badlands album after Voo Doo Hwy. We had worked up that group of tunes at rehearsals at Mates in North Hollywood two months before recording them at Good Night L.A by a friend of Ray's, Shea Baby.

It's all 24 track full studio recording, but we did it all in less than 6 to 8 hours. We put the Mic's up, made sure they worked and Go! We recorded them primarily for Atlantic Records to hear and give us a budget for the full recording of the same tunes, if they liked what we had. They did not like the direction of the songs, for what ever the reason. Some months later we were dropped from Atlantic.

At the time we were happy with that outcome and so was the Management, being that Atlantic was not doing anything for us anyway. We shopped new prospects.

Almost every song was one-take recordings. I remember having floor Tom mic problems where we stopped to fix it, then restarted a song. But all in all, one takes. Even some endings were a little funky on my end, but Jake just flagged it off and we go to the next tune. I think Jake is the only one who did not make one mistake...if he did I did not hear it.

Ray had about 50% of his lyrics together. The rest were what he called Jib-A-Jab. He would put a word or two on the front of a line and rest were all vowels. He was amazing at it, and most folks never could tell the difference. He would come up with his melody line by Jib-A-Jabbing. I think he had a harder time finding lyrics that fit his Jabbing, due to the timing and the percussive hooks he would come up with while scatting along.

Nothing on Dusk was fixed, that Ray did, obviously due to his passing before the putting together of the tracks. For him to sound like what you hear on the album one take each tune, still amazes me to no end. He was one you could say had true talent, pitch and tone.

Why did you record Dusk "live"??

If you wanted to hear what Badlands sounded like in room, where you could just sit and watch. No mirrors, no smoke, no Bullshit. That is Dusk.

The best thing we did together was play. The biz end and all that comes with it, was the hard part. I have a recording of a Radio show around Seattle called Bob's Garage where we actually set up in this guy's garage. We played a few tunes and then did an interview. I had come across that tape a few years back and it's so tight and squeaky, it hurts. Both tunes were our jamming tunes...that anything go's. It was banging. I do believe Bob's Garage was used to weed out false musicians and bands. We passed with flying colors.

If you got another deal....would you have released Dusk as is? made fixes or re-record all the songs and make a "real" album??

It would have been all re-recorded at a huge amount of money. Most likely with changes in the songs and different songs. Atlantic, or the person we had to deal with, Jason Flom, like to get his mitts on tunes and fuck with them. Jake would not have any of that kind of Crap....one of the things I liked about him! Most likely why Atlantic jerked us around, we would not try to fit in to what ever band just made them alot of money and they thought it would be a good idea to follow........ but who know for sure.

Hope you Badlands fans enjoyed that....Imagine hearing most of that story, driving to the hardware story!

_________________Ken Hower Wrote: My advice to everyone.....DO NOT purchase any of these photographs....Tim Findlay can jack off to his hearts content over his killer pictures...alone.

Regards,
Ken

Fri Oct 29, 2004 4:23 am

Racer_J

Superhero

Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2003 3:06 pmPosts: 1168Location: AR

That's absolutely amazing. I loved it, great stuff. Badlands is definitely one of my favorite bands and if you haven't heard Dusk you really need to.

I'm going to go back and listen to it again with a new understanding of how it was done.

Thanks,

Jason

_________________"If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards...Checkmate."

Fri Oct 29, 2004 3:41 pm

Racer_J

Superhero

Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2003 3:06 pmPosts: 1168Location: AR

BTW you can go to the Jake E. Lee website and download a live Badlands track with Jeff playing on it. The site is trying to figure out what song they are playing. They have Mel Galley/ex-Whitesnake jamming with them and it's pretty cool.

_________________You are way too stupid to know what a zygote is, motherfucker.

Fri Oct 29, 2004 9:48 pm

JeffMartin

Racer X - Current Member

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 7:09 pmPosts: 125Location: Lake Tahoe, Ca

One thing I must comment about Dusk is a vision I see in my mind every time some brings up the project or I listen to it myself.

During the begining of the song Sun Red Sun, while Jake was doing the intro, I could see Ray in the Vocal booth through a glass partition sitting on a stool giving me that charismatic smile of his. His arm held out in front of him and running his index finger back and forth across ten or twelve thin silver Indian bracelets he always wore.

That's the chimes you hear in the track.

_________________Regards,
Jeff Martin

Sat Oct 30, 2004 12:04 am

sofoklis the beast

God Of The Sun

Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2002 8:08 pmPosts: 2379Location: Montreal

Until this day Badlands is still the loudest club concert I've ever attended....

One thing I must comment about Dusk is a vision I see in my mind every time some brings up the project or I listen to it myself.

During the begining of the song Sun Red Sun, while Jake was doing the intro, I could see Ray in the Vocal booth through a glass partition sitting on a stool giving me that charismatic smile of his. His arm held out in front of him and running his index finger back and forth across ten or twelve thin silver Indian bracelets he always wore.

One thing I must comment about Dusk is a vision I see in my mind every time some brings up the project or I listen to it myself.

During the begining of the song Sun Red Sun, while Jake was doing the intro, I could see Ray in the Vocal booth through a glass partition sitting on a stool giving me that charismatic smile of his. His arm held out in front of him and running his index finger back and forth across ten or twelve thin silver Indian bracelets he always wore.

That's the chimes you hear in the track.

Thank you Jeff, wow. speechless . . .

Sun May 01, 2005 3:57 pm

Sandman

Godzilla

Joined: Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:26 pmPosts: 948Location: Denver

sofoklis the beast wrote:

Until this day Badlands is still the loudest club concert I've ever attended....

Yeah, they were really loud. Racer X was really loud, too. At least at the Country Club show.

_________________"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of freedom." - John F. Kennedy 1961

Wanted to resurrect this thread as I've just heard this disc for the first time last week. I was never much of a Badlands fan, mostly based on my opinion that the debut album was nothing great. One of my co-workers brought the first album as well as "Dusk" in for me and I'm hooked -- what a great album.

Of course, I had to look at the credits on the first album because I used to work with Paul O'Neill (produced/managed them) a few years after the Badlands album and he told me some great stories about them. He never did mention Jeff, though, so I'm wondering if he still managed them when Jeff was in the band.

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